Preface

From quite different points of view all the articles in this issue of Ibsen Studies consider problems pertaining to the performance of Ibsen on stage. In “Pastor Hansen’s Confirmation Class: Religion, Freedom, and the Female Body in Et dukkehjem” Julie Holledge focuses on the interpretative possibilities contained in this play “that give artists the opportunity to represent publicly an autonomous female desiring body on the stage”. She argues that contemporary productions of A Doll’s House stage this female body as either “Madonna” or “whore”, understood as a continuum and not a binary opposition. She links this bifurcation of interpretative strategies on stage to the role of patriarchal religion in the performance culture in question. Holledge shows that religious doubt is important within the text, and that this element paradoxically enough has been left out in productions of the play both in the “secular” northern European cultures and in strongly religious Islamic cultures today, albeit for very different reasons. Her interrogation into the politics of theatrical representation, then, rests on textual and contextual arguments. Holledge’s thought-provoking article concludes with a discussion of the possibilities of “creating a new representational paradigm for the female body”, a project that Ibsen can be seen as deeply engaged in and that has to realized anew in every performance of Et dukkehjem. In his article, “Persistence of Memory: Ratan Thiyam’s Approach to When We Dead Awaken,” Kamaluddin Nilu analyzes Thiyam’s magisterial 2008 production of Ibsen’s “dramatic epilogue.” Nilu sees the performance as a successful instance of what he calls “organic intercultural performance,” a complex form of cultural encountering within the theatre, one that is able to combine formal and thematic elements from several cultures and traditions while communicating successfully with a diverse audience, locally and internationally. The main questions informing Nilu’s analysis are, on the one hand, how we are to “explain the response of Indians and foreigners to a production performed in a language that few outside Manipur understand”, and on the other, how we are to explain the fact that

From quite different points of view all the articles in this issue of Ibsen Studies consider problems pertaining to the performance of Ibsen on stage. In "Pastor Hansen's Confirmation Class: Religion, Freedom, and the Female Body in Et dukkehjem" Julie Holledge focuses on the interpretative possibilities contained in this play "that give artists the opportunity to represent publicly an autonomous female desiring body on the stage". She argues that contemporary productions of A Doll's House stage this female body as either "Madonna" or "whore", understood as a continuum and not a binary opposition. She links this bifurcation of interpretative strategies on stage to the role of patriarchal religion in the performance culture in question.
Holledge shows that religious doubt is important within the text, and that this element paradoxically enough has been left out in productions of the play both in the "secular" northern European cultures and in strongly religious Islamic cultures today, albeit for very different reasons. Her interrogation into the politics of theatrical representation, then, rests on textual and contextual arguments. Holledge's thought-provoking article concludes with a discussion of the possibilities of "creating a new representational paradigm for the female body", a project that Ibsen can be seen as deeply engaged in and that has to realized anew in every performance of Et dukkehjem.
In his article, "Persistence of Memory: Ratan Thiyam's Approach to When We Dead Awaken," Kamaluddin Nilu analyzes Thiyam's magisterial 2008 production of Ibsen's "dramatic epilogue." Nilu sees the performance as a successful instance of what he calls "organic intercultural performance," a complex form of cultural encountering within the theatre, one that is able to combine formal and thematic elements from several cultures and traditions while communicating successfully with a diverse audience, locally and internationally.
The main questions informing Nilu's analysis are, on the one hand, how we are to "explain the response of Indians and foreigners to a production performed in a language that few outside Manipur understand", and on the other, how we are to explain the fact that Ibsen's text still seems to communicate globally. It is, in other words, an analysis that tries to take the two-way cultural traffic involved in this kind of staging seriously; he focuses on the local cultural and political context for Thiyam, i.e. Manipur, in addition to the use of traditional Indian performance, and his use of images and conventions from a Western tradition of art and theatre. Ashibaghee Eshei, as the performance is called, is an important, seminal performance of this play and Nilu's analysis sheds light on central cultural and aesthetic aspects of the production.
For Nilu and Holledge the performance is, if not autonomous, then at least a separate work of art, independent of the text in the sense that the text is only a template for innumerable and diverging performances. Ellen Rees seems to put another kind of emphasis on the text, and underscores that Ibsen remained a realistic-mimetic writer even in his last play. In her discussion of "Problems of Landscape and Representation in Ibsen's Når vi døde vågner" she analyses the stage directions in detail and then in turn uses this as an analytical tool in a brief discussion of the scenography in the performances of the play at The National Theatre in Oslo from 1900 till today.
She shows convincingly that Ibsen's description of landscape and outer world in the play to a large extent have been neglected -and increasingly so -in productions of the play at The National Theatre. While being aware of a certain kind of necessity in this, owing to the almost cinematic detail in the descriptions, Rees argues that they not only matter in the meaning of the play, but that something important is lost if effaced in the name of modernist abstraction.
Her textual analysis relates to the social and cultural reality behind Ibsen's text, i.e. to the growing tourist industry that constitutes the surroundings for Rubek's return "home." In Rees' reading the landscape within the text is thus important also as a social and cultural reflection on currents in Ibsen's time, ultimately even as a reflection on "the construction of Norwegian national identity."